One of Microsoft's stated goals for Windows 8 is for it to run on any system capable of running Windows 7, which at a minimum will require the its resource usage to remain the same as its predecessor's. Today on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft's Bill Karagounis details how the company has worked not just to maintain memory usage relative to Windows 7, but to reduce it, with an eye toward making it run acceptably on ARM-based tablets that lack the beefy processors and multi-gigabyte RAM banks of today's PCs.

One improvement to the memory manager allows it to search for duplicated items in memory, and to unload all but a single copy to save space (the Windows installer and image deployment tools for enterprises do something similar to reduce the size of the install media, keeping one copy of a given file and a record of everywhere that file needs to go on the hard drive rather than, say, five copies of the same file). Another allows developers to designate certain parts of programs and processes as "low priority," meaning that when the OS needs more memory it can maintain system responsiveness by removing those less-important bits from RAM first.

The OS's other major memory-saving trick comes not from reprogramming major programs and services, but changing how and when they run. Many services in Windows 8 - Windows Update, the Plug and Play service, and others - run only when they're needed, while in Windows 7 they run in the background more or less constantly. By changing some traditional Windows services to run only when triggered and making many new-to-Windows 8 services behave the same way, the OS can save RAM without actually shedding features.

For more, Microsoft's blog post is as always more exhaustive and detailed than what we've reported here - it's linked below for your convenience.

Several protesters were interviewed last week, and they could not even state why they were there and what the mission was. One brainiac just said, and I quote: "I'm just angry. I don't have a reason. Can't I just be angry without a reason?"

We aren't going to be turned into a fascist/neo-Marxist government run state of nation, so deal with it, protesters. (Fascism = government control over private industry and Marxism = no individual property rights). Reply

Too bad some of the protesters where caught off guard, or even mis-quoted. But the issue is very real, and the real criminals should be punished. But don't get me wrong, I really believe in capitalism and the pursuit of money. It drives the well being of us all with mass production and cheaper food, new technology and new products, new movies etc.

But it should be well regulated so we don't get crises like we have today, that was triggered by the rotten house loans in USA and the reckless economic engineering and borrowing by the Greece government.

Here is a good comment from nytimes.com:

Obama was the chance for the US to avoid this sense of alienation anddespair, and he took the low road--kowtowing to Wall Street and givingthe banksters everything they wanted. The chance was misused andabused. What is the alternative to our system? It is well-regulatedgovernment for the people, not winner take all capitalism. Capitalismdoes work, just like crime pays, but it has to be overseen byresponsible people and the rewards and punishments for participatingin capitalism have to be appropriate. There is a common good! Thegovernment's job is to enforce it. That means that the abusers in thebanks-- those who bet on defaults, for example-- cannot be allowed todo so. It is simple, but not easy. Obama had a mandate, and floutedit. Let the chaos begin, since it is unavoidable. Jane SmileyCalifornia Sep 28, 2011 4:15 PMReply